474 BUFFALO LAND. 



This stream attracted such a large portion of the immigra- 

 tion of 1871 that it is already settled upon for some distance 

 above Fort Zarah. The soil is very rich, the climate pleasant 

 and healthy, and good success attends both stock and crop- 

 raising. 



STOCK-KAISING IN THE GREAT WEST. 



Mr. W. N. Byers, who has lived for many years in 

 Colorado, lately contributed the following valuable article to 

 the Rocky Mountain News, treating more particularly of the 

 western half of the plains : 



" After the mining interest, which must always take rank as 

 the first productive industry in the mountain territories of the 

 West, stock-raising will doubtless continue next in importance. 

 The peculiarities of climate and soil adapt the grass-covered 

 country west of the ninety-eighth degree of longitude es- 

 pecially to the growth and highest perfection of horses, cattle, 

 and sheep. The earliest civilized explorers found the plains 

 densely populated with buffalo, elk, deer, and antelope, their 

 numbers exceeding computation. Great nations of Indians 

 subsisted almost entirely by the fruits of the chase, but, with 

 the rude weapons used, were incapable of diminishing their 

 numbers. With the advent of the white man and the intro- 

 duction of fire-arms, and to supply the demands of commerce, 

 these wild cattle have been slaughtered by the million, until 

 their range, once six hundred miles wide from east to west, and 

 extending more than two thousand miles north and south, over 

 which they moved in solid columns, darkening the plains, has 

 been diminished to an irregular belt, a hundred and fifty miles 



